Focus on People

There is more information now available about UBC Breastfeeding-Friendly Spaces at UBC Vancouver. This is a joint initiative from Human Resources, the Equity Office and the Department of Health, Safety and Environment. For information about the UBC Breastfeeding-Friendly Spaces at UBC Okanagan, which are already established, please go to the UBC Okanagan Sustainability Office website.

While every mother has the right to breastfeed in public, some mothers may prefer to breastfeed their children in more discreet settings for personal, religious or ethnic reasons. To support diversity and as part of the University’s effort to create a supportive and healthy environment for all students, staff and faculty UBC has created a network of semi-private and private Breastfeeding-Friendly Spaces across campus, but we need your help to create more spaces.

Key Features of Breastfeeding-Friendly Spaces

Comfortable seating, electrical outlets, and change table in room or a nearby washroom

Sanitization and educational information for families

The degree of privacy in designated spaces varies from private to semi-private. Signage outside of these spaces will signify if the space is private or semi-private.

These spaces are designed for mothers to breastfeed or pump, yet many of these spaces can be used by anyone tending to a child. Fathers should note that some spaces are women-only spaces, due to facility constraints (eg. the space is accessed only through a women’s washroom).

> The website is a good example of integrating the UBC brand guidelines, without sacrificing visual aesthetics. Although the colours are more muted in this rendition, your eye is drawn more naturally to the rotating feature stories and the pictorials. Having rotating features conveys a sense of motion, that there’s new stories being developed and posted more frequently than when we had static images.

> The navigation structure has moved slightly away from listing each individual strategy under Focus on People and more into illustrating the outcomes of the program initiatives and programs. This is a content model we’d like to continue to explore in all HR web properties – the “show and tell” of our successes.

> Our UBC HR Twitter feed is prominently displayed on the home page. We continue to promote our social media tools as a means to bridge communications from UBC HR directly to our internal and external audiences.

> In another two weeks, we’ll be launching the online version of the 2009 Focus on People Annual Report, with six feature articles that highlight the past year and an invitation to the UBC community to share, comment and provide feedback.

My thanks to Breeonne and Adrian for finagling through the technical jungle to make this happen expediently, and I look forward to sharing the online Annual Report with all in the weeks ahead.

UBC’s Point Grey campus is the home of the UBC Botanical Garden, Canada’s oldest continuously operating university botanic garden. The UBC Botanical Garden was established in 1916 under the directorship of John Davidson, British Columbia’s first provincial botanist.

$5 Membership: UBC Faculty and Staff have the opportunity to purchase an annual membership for $5.00. Membership gets you free admission to both the UBC Botanical Garden and the Nitobe Memorial Garden (see below). Considering that a single day’s adult pass to the Garden is $8, signing up for a membership is worth it! This offer is open to all UBC Faculty and Staff, regardless of your campus location. Download the membership form today.

The entrance to the British Columbia Native Garden, inside the UBC Botanical Garden.

Hours: The Botanical Garden’s spring hours are 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on weekdays, 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on weekends. Visitor parking is available, or you can hop onto the C20 shuttle bus [route map] from the UBC Bus Loop.

Canopy Walkway: One of the newest features of the UBC Botanical Garden is the Greenheart Canopy Walkway. The 308-metre walkway reaches heights in excess of 17.5 metres, allowing visitors and researchers to experience the unique biodiversity of a Pacific Coastal Rainforest canopy, which includes treetop mosses, lichens, birds, insects and other invertebrates, and offers a “bird’s eye” view of the forest canopy. UBC Staff and Faculty members of the garden can show their member card to get Concession pricing to the Canopy Walkway.

Amphitheatre: This spring, the Botanical Garden will open its new outdoor amphitheatre, available for outdoor lectures, meetings or events. Contact the Garden for more information on the amphitheatre.

Another of the UBC Botanical Garden’s sites is the Nitobe Memorial Garden, a traditional Japanese garden. The Nitobe Memorial Garden is considered to be the best traditional authentic Japanese Tea and Stroll Garden in North America.